Saturday, January 31, 2015

Another prototype mini for my boardgame Tunnel Fight. This one is a Dwarf Monitor, a heavily armored guard tasked with keeping the passages and tunnels of vast underground industrial complexes free of intruders. They use rapid firing laser pistols to pin down enemies and chip away at them until they perish in a shower of burning laser-light.

They are armored in ballistic cloth and hardened ceramic alloys that combined with the dwarf's natural ability to carry heavy loads gives them a great degree of freedom. They also carry hardened shields that add to their overall defense and can be used in close-quarters fighting. These can be used with other monitors to form nearly impenetrable shield walls.

Guild markings on the right shoulder and left shin-guard plus unit markings on right shin-guard. Notice mounting lugs on helmet for optional face shield.

Pouches carry grenades and extra power packs for the laser pistols.

In contrast to the Tunnel Ratlings who use stealth and murderous fury, the Dwarf Monitors combine overwhelming firepower with tenacious defense.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

I've been getting drawn back into Games Workshop's abandoned game Dark Future recently via the Facebook Oldhammer: Dark Future Group and although I don't have a copy of the game I do have a small collection of vehicles that I've always planned on converting to use in the game. One of the great draws of Dark Future is that it used a scale that allowed Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars to be armed and play in the game. And given that the actual cars used for the game are getting rare quickly due to renewed interest it's looking like I'll be using toy store proxies.

A common type of vehicle in DF is called a Renegade, basically an armed and armored dune buggy used by the less pleasant types of Dark Future baddies. Recently I found a Hot Wheels car called Bull Whip that I decided would look cool as a Renegade. All it would need was a bit of arming and armoring and a new paint job.

Low profile tires on an off-road vehicle?! Balderdash!

Nice 1970s throw-back graphics. Dork.

Disassembly was super-easy since the body was only riveted on with plastic. I remember the older cars used metal pins and those took a lot more Dremeling. These ground out like softened butter.

I wanted to add some mesh over the windows and luckily had some Kotobukiya mesh plate which would match the scale really well. You can find it here. Taking apart the car beforehand made it much easier to add the mesh.

I reassembled the whole thing, added a cut down gun from Rebel Minis and laser cut some wheel covers to mask the goofy low profile tires. Then it was just a matter of painting it in various layers of paint and weathering effects. I did a few layers and then lightly sanded the whole thing. I dry-brushed multiple layers on top of each other. I added graffiti and militant decals. Then more dry-brushing and finally paint spatters. And honestly, I overdid it.

It's been a while since I've painted anything like this and wanted to try out the whole bag of tricks. I might completely paint over the whole thing again and just imagine it to be recently car-jacked and painted in new gang colors. Although I'm not totally happy with it I had fun with it and honestly, it only cost a buck. And I think that's one of the main draws for painting and playing Dark Future. Other then the hard to find road tiles and the original minis it remains a gaming bargain seeing that you can pick up a new vehicle for less than a dollar.